Blog

Post navigation

So I continued on down the road, and I’d gone about forty-five minutes, and nobody had caught up with me. I didn’t understand why no one had caught up with me. I mean, they were ridin’ like bats out of hell even with a sick kid, so they should’ve caught up with me by now. I didn’t know what was goin’ on, but I looked down and saw that I needed some gas, so I found a service station and pulled into it. The first thing out of the guy’s mouth was, “I don’t take anything but Chile money. You got any Chile money?” I said, “Yeah, here it is.” While I was gettin’ gas, two guys in a pickup truck came up and asked me where I was goin’ and where I’d been. I told ’em where I’d been and then told ’em I was goin’ to the Strait of Magellan. They looked at me and said, “You’ve got to go back.” I was a bit confused because I didn’t think I had gotten there yet, and I told ’em that. One of the guys said, “Si, yeah, go back ninety kilometers, back.” I grabbed my map, wantin’ to prove them wrong, but the instant I looked at the map, I saw exactly what I had done. I got gassed up, turned to go back the way I had been travelin’, and hauled it. I made it back to where I was supposed to turn, got to the Strait of Magellan, got on the ferry, and crossed. The one good thing was that I didn’t have to pay for the ferry ride. For some reason, the ferry people didn’t make me pay. I don’t know if it was because it was New Year’s Eve or what, but I didn’t have to pay. I guess on New Year’s Eve, people got real generous down there.

The agreement had kind of been that we were goin’ to ride at sixty to seventy miles an hour, we were goin’ to enjoy the trip, we’re goin’ to be able to look at some scenery, and all that. Well, that lasted about ten minutes, and then everybody’s runnin’ eighty to ninety miles an hour, runnin’ wide open.

I was at home for about a year before I started the last leg of my South American journey. I left home to start this last leg of the excursion on December 26, 2012, and I finished it sometime in January 2013. This time I wasn’t goin’ to do the trip alone. Maloney and I had been talkin’, and he knew that I was goin’ to go back down to finish the last part of my trip. The last time he had been with me, things didn’t go so well for him, but since then he had taken his wife on a trip down to Cuzco and out to the Amazon Valley. This trip helped Maloney’s wife realize that ridin’ down in South America wasn’t as dangerous as she had anticipated. So Colin was talkin’ to me about what I was goin’ to be doin’ on the last part of the trip. I asked him why he was so curious, and he said it was because he wanted to take an adventure trip with his son. I thought that would be nice, so I told him it was alright with me if they tagged along.

I didn’t do much durin’ the other days I was in Santiago. I mostly just stayed close to the hotel. I couldn’t go too far unless I wanted to pay for a taxi; I had to walk everywhere I went, because Zooky was sittin’ on a back porch takin’ a good, long, and deserved rest. There were two things I did worth mentionin’ while I was restin’ up before I went home. One day I decided that I was goin’ to walk around the city, just to see what was goin’ on. While I was walkin’, I came upon the presidential palace. Before goin’ down to South America, I knew bits and pieces of the history of these countries, and as far as Chile’s history was concerned, I knew that there had been a military coup, and for several years the country was under a dictator. For some reason, as I approached the presidential palace, I got the distinct feelin’ that you didn’t talk about that period of Chile’s history.

I mean, as you were goin’ down the road, you were right under waterfalls, and sometimes the waterfalls were comin’ off right onto the road. Also, as you were drivin’, you could see cables that the natives used to cross those valleys. Attached to the cables were little boxes, so the natives got in those boxes and rode that cable across. It was just homemade stuff, but it seemed to work. This Yungas Highway led you down into the Amazon Valley, out into the middle of nowhere. The Yungas ended all of a sudden in the middle of the jungle. This rocky, stone road just ended and turned into a dirt road. There were no signs out there, but I knew that the new highway wasn’t too far away, so I took a left, rode about thirty minutes, and got to the new highway.

Let me tell you one thing, that ride up to Machu Picchu was one hell of a ride. It was about half-scary. By the time I made it all the way to Machu Picchu, I was about half worn out, but I went in and looked around anyway. I mean, I’d made such an effort, there was no reason not to go look around. I didn’t really care much about the architecture and all that was at Machu Picchu, but I knew it was a place to go see in Peru, so I made the effort and now I can say I’ve seen it. I’m not sayin’ that the place isn’t pretty; it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to. It is amazin’ that the Incas could’ve even built somethin’ like that. We can hardly build anything that lasts today, and the Incas built this village on top of a mountain without modern technology. We are wimps compared to the South American natives. I really wasn’t interested in seein’ rubble, but that view, man, it’s worth the hike up that mountain. Luckily today there is a road in that mountain where you just have to hike. If that road wasn’t there, you’d have to climb straight up and probably die just to see a beautiful view. I stayed up there for a couple of hours. It took me so long to get there, I saw no reason to be up there just a few minutes and then leave. I had to stay long enough to justify the trouble it took to get there. I came back down and had supper in Aguas Calientes.

It was takin’ a while to get to Cuzco, so I continued tellin’ Zooky about my time over in Germany. I lived right in downtown Frankfurt, right on the Main River. Our place was not but six blocks from the train station. We lived in an old buildin’ that was built, I think, in the 1800s or somethin’ like that, but durin’ WWII it had been a Luftwaffe prison. The place was really interestin’; you could walk down the halls and still see all the swastikas and other German symbols of that time etched into the walls. Livin’ there was just like livin’ in a college dorm. You just came and went as you pleased. I can’t remember how many of us lived in this little bitty ol’ place, but we were so isolated from everybody else that it wasn’t like bein’ in the army. We had a little enlisted men’s club there, and one night a week, we’d have a nickel night where you could buy any drink you wanted, any amount of beer, for a nickel. You could go slap a dollar down on the bar, and get twenty beers. It was great.

I was frustrated because I didn’t know what I was goin’ to be doin’. I didn’t have much to do now but hang out with this Jewish buddy of mine from Philadelphia, David Spritzler. Spritzler, bein’ Jewish, to him everybody who wasn’t a Jew was Catholic. So there wasn’t no Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, or nothin’. If you weren’t Jewish, you were Catholic. That was just the way it was. So he called me “Catholic Fella” all the time with that strong Philadelphia accent. So it was always, “Where you goin’, Catholic Fella?” And he was as funny as he could be. So Spritzler and I were hangin’ out together since he was in limbo just like me.

Maloney’s oh-so-intelligent statement about the village not havin’ a place to stay reminded me of all the times Dan knew there wouldn’t be a place to stay, or the place he was lookin’ for didn’t exist, and then magically the campground or hotel appeared. I know Dan makes Colin sound like he didn’t know what he was doin’, but if you’ve read about the previous two trips I’ve been on with Dan, you know he’s done the same stupid thing.

I didn’t listen to Maloney. I pulled into a service station near us, found a guy who owned one of those three-wheel cabs, and asked if there was a place to stay nearby. He said, “Si,” pointed to himself, and then pointed in the direction. This meant we were to follow him to the hotel. So Colin and I followed our taxi driver, and he took us to this fantastic little ol’ ten-room boutique hotel. It was really nice and had a fantastic restaurant. Findin’ this place made Colin about half-mad, but it was a lifesaver.

I guess in the end, they didn’t know more than me. But I admired these guys because they had sold everything just to take this trip. They even went so far as to sell their house so they could have enough money for the trip, and if they ever ran out of money they would just stop and work until they made enough to continue on. I thought that was a great thing to do. I have always admired those who take time out to do the things that they really want to do. I’m not sayin’ to avoid responsibility, but take time out to go and do somethin’ you really want to do. Don’t be afraid. Do what you want, even if it’s just for a couple of weeks or even just a weekend, but go for your dreams. But anyway, the Copper Canyon trip was a great trip, and it’s beautiful down around Copper Canyon.